Category Game Design

Parkour Ninja animations

I'm going to poke my head in here to reassure everyone that the game is making steady progress. The environment now turns transparent when it gets in the way of the camera, and the player has some nifty new moves and mechanics, plus a very shnazzy looking power bar to indicate how much "juice" you have to perform special moves. The latest addition here is the skill roll, which prevents you from slowing down or dying when falling long distances. Take a gander!

December 2010 Tech Demo

I finally got animations working! I'm using a Blender to FBX script, along with this fantastic multi-take FBX importer. Apparently XNA depends on the actual FBX API for importing, and the API changed drastically just before XNA 4 released, so they didn't have time to get multiple takes (animation clips) working in one file. This importer automagically splits out the takes from the FBX file, processes them independently, then combines them into the original model. I encountered a bug with the Blender to FBX script, but as of today it's been fixed and committed. You can get the Blender export script here and the importer here. (edit: here's a sample project, including a .blend file, .fbx file, and all necessary code)

Further deets

Okay, it's time to shed some light on this project.

First off, my goal is to release on Xbox and, if possible, Steam (if not, I'll be looking at other online stores). I figure these are the two largest, most practical target markets. The release price will be between $1 and $5, with 100% of the proceeds going to charity (more on this later...).

There are two main themes I want to nail in this game. The first is giving the player freedom to alter the game world; to literally change the world geometry by performing sweet parkour moves (jumps, flips, slides, etc.). The idea is, to create a wall, you simply jump into mid-air and perform a wall jump as if the wall was there, and poof, it's there. Need to get through that annoying concrete barrier? No problem, slide right through it like it's butter.

Back at it!

That's right kids. I's back with a new game project. I will post these two tantalizing morsels for you. Let the wild speculation begin!

I realize the chill music in the video doesn't exactly match the motif of the above image, or the whole game really, but hey, it's just a tech demo. No need to start murdering people just yet.

Gameplay trailer

Finally got sound working in these videos, yay! New features in this video include the aforementioned shadow mapping and reloading, a brand new three player map called Orbit, and heavy modifications to the original Impact level.

I really cannot wait to get the multiplayer up and running, and get people playing the beta. Next on my to-do list are a few standard online features: basic match-making, in-game chat, etc.

Without further ado:

Reloading, shadow mapping

Thanks to the Panda3D 1.7.0 shader generator supporting shadow mapping, and the awesome new BuildBot service set up on the Panda3D website, A3P now supports basic shadow mapping! Actually, the sun is just implemented as a giant spotlight with a 2048x2048 shadow buffer. Definitely not the most efficient or high-quality method, but certainly the easiest, and the results are acceptable.

Also new in SVN is a reloading mechanic. The shotgun, chaingun, and sniper rifle all have to be reloaded, with varying clip sizes and reload times. Of course, reloading units are highlighted as vulnerable, and they also beep furiously to make it perfectly clear they need to be shot at.

Schedule delays

It's time to face the facts. While the game is progressing at an incredible pace, it's not going to be ready by January 9, or even the end of January. So, I guess I failed to meet my deadline.

But! I'm not giving up. I'll still be releasing regular updates, and especially once the multiplayer lobby server is set up, things will start getting a lot more polish. My new goal will be to finish the game before school lets out for the summer. Of course it will be online and playable well before then, but I won't consider it "finished" until I'm satisfied.

New gameplay

Sorry for the distinct lack of updates this blog has. A lot is happening right now with Stainless, and most of it's good. :)

First off, Stainless is going to have online multiplayer! Woot. Thanks to the fabulous work by the guys over at Panda3D, it may even live in a browser plugin on the SourceForge website. Either way, I came across a problem I never anticipated with online multiplayer: NAT punch-through.

November update

This month's release will start to show more of the Real-Time Strategy side of Stainless. One new feature that unfortunately will exclude a section of the target audience is speech recognition. I'm using the MS Speech API, which obviously only works on Windows. Sorry Linux and Mac users. :(

Still, it's going to be worth it. Right now the level design and AI are not quite advanced enough to benefit from speech commands, but the potential is there. Also, the game has a new system for money management, which means players will have to start rationing their money and deciding which units to buy. Basically, you'll buy the right to use a certain unit for one round in a game, and no matter how many times that unit dies that round, he'll respawn for free. But then the next round, you have to buy all new units.

Prepping for first release

Less than one week away from release! Looking at the to-do list from last week, I actually haven't worked a lot on the items listed. I've been ironing out a lot of bugs and adding polish. The multiplayer scoring is now working, and you can see everyone's scores on the top of the screen, conveniently color-coded. I killed the ugly black boxes around the scores and added drop shadows instead, and I moved your current balance to the right side of the screen, to avoid confusion. Take a gander: